The infamous, 10 Year Profile Hub collection. An Interview with Gottfried “Gotti” Mühlbauer.

Interview : Gottfried “Gotti” Mühlbauer , Munich Germany , 26 years

Questions : Torsten Pullich , countrybikes

When did you start riding?

I started to ride BMX when I was about 12 years old. I rolled around and started
to really do some tricks when I was about 14… I just had crappy bikes in that time
so I started to save up for a custom bike. It took me 2 years to get the money together for an
awesome bike.

How did your obsession with profile hubs start?

I pretty much went to every sk8 park in and around Munich and at some point.
I met Simon Schober, a Profile Racing rider in Germany, and I saw his antifreeze
hubs. I was fascinated by them. I always heard about them and finally
I got to see them in person. Not just the fact that those hubs are technically amazing, it
was the first time I saw hubs in a completely different color other than black or polished.

Then what?

After I saw Simon I wanted to get my own pair of Mini’s and I did 🙂
I saw an advertisment for the Minis in a Ride magazine and I realized how many
different colors there were. So I thought it would be cool to get all of those
over time (I guess that’s when it was 7 colors?).
At some point a friend called me and asked if I wanted to join him in going to the
countrybikes office (Profile Distribution Germany , Austria , and Switzerland).
I walked in there and I saw all the colors sitting on the shelves and that was just amazing. I realized that profile also does special editions and that just made me crazy 🙂

Why so many ?

I guess it just happend over time… I never thought I was going to have 100 hubshells
sitting at my house 🙂 I just started to collect them, trade them, do whatever
to get all those colors together. I remember driving all the way to Stuttgart,
which is like a 2-1/2 hour drive just to trade a hubshell with that dude…
It is just a hobby or maybe an addiction 🙂
I was always into colors and also worked as a industrial painter for a while,
so I guess it’s me that wants a colorful life.

What are you doing now ?

After visiting countrybikes about a 300 times, Simon Stevens and Torsten Pullich
asked me If I would be interested in helping out there every once in a while
cause they opened up a shop in downtown Munich. That was March 2012,
and since then, I’ve been at countrybikes taking care of the Shop and
helping Torsten with the distro too.